Question

The past participle form of the irregular verb ‘shrink’ is-

a)Shrink
b)Shrank
c)Shrunk
d)Shrinking

Answer 1

Hint: Irregular verbs refer to those verbs that do not form their simple past tense or past participle form by adding ‘ed’ or ‘d’ to the base form. Example- Sang and sung are the simple past tense and past participle form of ‘sing’.

Complete step by step solution:

As given in the hint, we can understand that ‘irregular verbs’ are opposed to ‘regular verbs’ in terms of their simple past and past participle form of the verb. Regular verbs form their simple past tense and past participle form by adding ‘ed’ or ‘d’.
Example- Danced is the simple past and past participle form of the verb ‘dance’.
Now, let’s look at past participles or the 3rd form of the verb:
We use past participles to create past forms of the verbs or they are used as adjectives to modify and describe nouns. Example- He was tired after work. Here, ‘tired’ is a past participle that acts as an adjective to describe the pronoun ‘he’.
We use irregular past participles to form the past tense form of irregular verbs. Example- My mother has already eaten her medicine. Here, ‘eaten’ is the irregular past participle form of the irregular verb ‘eat’.
In the given question: ‘Shrink’ refers to diminishing or reducing the size of something.
Let’s examine the given options-
Option a- ‘shrink’ is the base form of the irregular verb ‘shrink’. Hence, it is an incorrect option.
Option b- ‘shrank’ is the simple past tense form of the irregular verb ‘shrink’. Hence, it is an incorrect option.
Option c- ‘shrunk’ is the past participle or the 3rd form of the irregular verb ‘shrink’. Hence, it is the correct form.
Option d- ‘shrinking’ is the continuous form of the verb ‘shrink’. Hence, it is an incorrect option.
The correct answer is Option ‘c’.

Note: The past participle form of the verb is also known as the 3rd form of the verb. Hence, do not get confused between the two. You need to be thorough with words, in order to understand whether they would have an irregular verb form or a regular verb form.